Here’s a little experiment we played with lasts week. We stirred various things from the kitchen (turmeric, tea, coffee etc…) into water in bowls and then tried dying bits of wool with them. The main skills for this activity included fine motor skills in using a pair of (kids...

Here we are exploring ice. Ice is a brilliant medium for home experimenting as it is easy to make and very tactile. At it’s most basic form of experiment, kids love handling ice and seeing how it changes. Ice cubes can be a choking hazard though, so for Toby...

All kids love growing seeds. There’s something satisfying and magical about watching tiny bits of dry nothing turn into little green cress plants for example. Ollie’s been growing cress every few months since he turned two, so I decided to add another dimension to today’s experiment. Ollie is finding...

My friend just asked me a fab question ‘when should you start teaching reading?’. It’s really osmotic Nat – it’s one of the big arguments for ‘unschooling’ (as opposed to traditional ‘homeschooling’) that if you read regularly to your kids they will start to read for themselves and don’t...

The author Dan Patterson teamed up with the Duchess of Cornwall last week to launch a new campaign to encourage more fathers to read with their children. The theory is that because fathers don’t read to their kids, reading becomes something the children see as a feminine activity and...